Fluidity

{ Sara Arnold }

My daughter and her on-again, off-again school girlfriend broke up (again) recently.

         Both of them switch back and forth between identifying as a lesbian and identifying as bisexual.  My daughter knows she’s into girls, but isn’t sure about boys (though she has had a crush or two on a couple of them) whereas her ex definitely likes both.

         Unfortunately, her ex keeps dumping her for boys, playing into a bisexual stereotype I’d rather my kid not have to deal with. I don’t want her to believe that her only option here is “gold star lesbians.”

         I don’t find it easy to meet women between the ages of 25 and 55 at all, but my 11-year-old has had a series of age-appropriate girlfriends.  Regular readers of my column will know that I’ve been looking for women to date with no luck whereas my daughter has lesbians, bi, pan, etc tweens and teens just throwing themselves at her.

         Sexuality is so fluid for Generation Z and Generation Alpha.  They can be gay, bisexual, asexual, or abrosexual on any given day.  They try on what it’s like to be non-binary or genderqueer.  Part of it is finding themselves and exploring what feels right as they grow from children into young adults.

          But I do believe the rest is generational.  The younger generations have almost no closets in comparison to those of us like myself born in the 1980s, who definitely couldn’t be out at school or have a same-sex prom date, and I certainly had far fewer closets than those who came before me who faced arrest or their lives being ruined.

        Despite the polarization in this country, most kids today feel like they can be whomever they want to be, for however long they want to be.  They can try different sexuality and gender hats and see what fits.

          (At least in New England.  I feel terrible for the children where just being their transgender selves is illegal in their southern states like Texas, or who need to be careful in places like Tennessee, but that’s another column.)

         My daughter has also gone back and forth about identifying as non-binary and has repeatedly changed her pronouns.  For a while, “they” was her preferred pronoun, then “she/they”, and now it’s “she.”  Currently, she identifies as female but that was after two years of being non-binary.

         But who knows what the future brings?  There is so much different terminology to describe different aspects of gender and sexuality that I can only imagine the labels she’ll try on in the next ten or fifteen years.

          Some will stick, in the short-term.   Others will become part of her long-term self and who she ultimately will be in adulthood.  And as long as she’s happy and healthy, having sane, safe, and consensual relationships, I’ll be fine with it.